The History of Cutting - The Soviet Theory of Montage
Abstract This fifteen minute video is about the history of montage as a film-making technique. It originated in Soviet Russia because of lack of resources and film stock. Because of this, the editing was used to take the small amount of film available and transform it into something greater. The history begins with the idea of the Kuleshov Effect. This is when the same clips are cut to different things, making the same clips appear as though they have different emotion. Montage itself was later developed by Sergei Eisenstein. The basic idea is that ordering small sections of film in different ways can have different outcomes. Key Concepts There are five methods of montage described by this video: # Metric: This is using cuts to go along with a beat. These cuts, then, will just go by the length of the shot and nothing else. These series of cuts can then set a tempo, which can then be increased or decreased in order to achieve different emotional responses. # Rhythmic: This is similar to metric montage, but it also concerns what is in the shot as well as the timing of the cuts. The actions of the people or things in the shot have their own tempo to go along with the cuts' tempo. # Tonal: This is a technique that considers the tone of each shot. Some things considered are: lighting, shadow, shape of frame. # Over-tonal: This is a way of combining the previous three montage methods to create a larger sequence of montage. # Intellectual or Ideological: This is a way to represent abstract ideas using cuts between different intellectual ideas, whereas the previous four methods are attempting to induce emotional response from the audience. This can be contrasted against the ideas in Visual Evidence, which discusses why it isn't possible to film abstract ideas. Montage, as an editing style, is in direct comparison to continuity editing. Picking a specific style should come down to what the editor desires. Keeping viewers' acute focus and attention is probably easier through continuity editing where it is easy to keep track of what is happening since it is all one cut. However, it's much easier to create a tempo using montage, and this tempo "can be raised or lowered for effect." A film doesn't necessarily need to contain all continuity or montage editing alone, but can combine the two together. These are critical decisions that need to be made when making a video argument. Examples There are plenty of good examples outlined in the video. One example of rhythmic montage is from Battleship Potemkin outlined at 10:06 in the video. There is a shot of marching soldiers all together. There is then a cut to a different view of the soldiers, still marching. These cuts set a certain tempo, but the marching also sets its own. One example of intellectual/ideological montage in Battleship Potemkin is outlined at 11:09. There is cutting between a priest tapping on his cross then cutting to an officer tapping his sword. This juxtaposition tells the viewer there is a commonality between the church and army/government. Keywords Kuleshov Effect, Montage Citations Video Link